FULTONDALE, Alabama - Fultondale
Mayor Jim Lowery acknowledged the overcrowding problem at schools in the city during his
State of the City address Friday morning, and said he knows there needs to
be a solution.

"We got the sixth grade in with
the 12th grade, and the principal and the staff over there are doing
a wonderful job managing, but it's not where we want to be," Lowery said.

Last summer the Jefferson County
School Board of Education chose to alleviate overcrowding at the elementary
school in Fultondale by moving
sixth-grade students to the Fultondale High School. This fall about 100
sixth-grade students started attending the high school, where seventh through
12th-grade students already attend. Following the announcement in
June of last year, Dr. Stephanie Robinson, the principal at the high school,
said Jefferson County Superintendent Dr. Stephen Nowlin told her within two to
three years capital improvements must take place in Fultondale, but no
specifics on whether or not that meant a new middle school were mentioned.

Fultondale schools are in the
county system, and any decisions are in the hands of the Jefferson County Board
of Education, but Lowery said he has been talking with Superintendent Nowlin regarding
the situation.

"It will probably be some
combination to where we have a ninth through 12th-grade high school
building and then our high school will be renovated into a middle school," Lowery
said. However, he said no official plans are underway and the county cannot
move forward until it knows how many students will be displaced once Gardendale
forms its own system and pulls out of the county system.

"You got Mount Olive and Brookside and North
Smithfield and Fultondale, and we're all needing a place to go to school,"
Lowery said. "We're looking at trying to locate a school for those students,
but before we can move forward with that we have to see how many students there
will be and at this time that's something that Gardendale doesn't know and we
do not know."

Lowery said while the process may
take some time, once plans move forward, "It's going to be exciting."